Grow and use plants that help you garden more sustainably. So many of them can improve fertility, provide useful and attractive structures, give you alternatives to plastic, eliminate synthetic chemicals, and all for free. You’ll achieve good results, whatever the size of the garden.

Most of us grow ornamentals in containers or have greedy feeders like tomatoes, so liquid feeds are always on the ‘to get’ list. Rather than splashing out on bottles of liquid feed that might contain synthetic chemicals, grow a clump of comfrey in a corner. Comfrey juice is rich in potash so is ideal for flowering and fruiting plants, and also contains nitrogen.

Choose ‘Bocking 14’, a sterile variety with attractive purple flowers, rather than wild comfrey which can seed all over the place. For best quality fertiliser, cut before flowering 3 or 4 times a year.

But you can also enjoy the floral display. For the first cut, select half of the plants before they flower, leaving the rest to flower before harvesting their leaves. You’ll then have staggered flowering throughout the growing season.

After cutting the foliage to about 5cm above ground level, stick it in a lidded bucket, weigh the leaves down with a stone, cover and leave for a few weeks. I drill holes in the bucket with a basin underneath to collect the juice. But you could simply pour off the dark liquid and put the leaves in the compost bin. Dilute 20 parts water : 1 comfrey.

Don’t add water to the comfrey while it’s ‘fermenting’ as it’ll stink and produce a much weaker feed.

Some garden plants produce ‘waste’ that actually improves soil fertility in other parts of the garden. Provided you don’t use synthetic feeds and herbicides that leave residues and poison the soil, lawn clippings add invaluable heat and nutrient to any compost bin.

The nitrogen-rich clippings also make a good mulch that can be topped up every time you cut the grass. Then leave the worms to squirrel away the decaying vegetation. If you’re worried about grass seed, cover the soil with a thick layer of newspaper before spreading the grass.

Fallen leaves, when collected and stored in a container or bag with drainage holes also make excellent mulch. They’ll rot down in a year or so, especially if you leave them open to the winter rains.

We should all want to help the environment by using less plastic in the garden. So, instead of buying plastic plant supports, why not grow and harvest your own.

Hazel is ideal. It can be coppiced to keep producing several stems rather than 2 or 3 tall trunks. Every year, I remove some from each stool and leave others to grow on. Successional coppicing allows the tree to renew itself and always look appealing. I cut a few tall straight ones for runner bean poles and other fan-shaped ones to support peonies or nicotiana.

This management lets you select almost any variety, compact, medium-sized or even large, and be confident it’ll fit the space you have and make a perfectly attractive feature for you.

I find willow utterly invaluable. Its pliable stems can be woven and shaped to whatever size you need to support a herbaceous plant. I even go to town and make a triangular or rectangular frame for sweet or tall edible peas.

And beauty is all. Varieties come in any colour you fancy: red, purple, green or golden wands. You keep these colours by annual coppicing. The Dorset company, World of Willow, [www.worldofwillow.co.uk], grows around 140 varieties and supplies fresh cuttings, along with whatever advice you need to get going.

Plant of the week

Geranium phaeum ‘Album’ is one of the earliest of the hardy geraniums. The translucent white flowers are especially effective in a shady spot.